NEWS: Update in the download section AEGIS Gunnery Crews

[Scoob]

In a Titan now with PPCs, Ion Ds & GHEPTs but it still ain't switching weapons even though I've got Gunnery Crews on 4 turrets

Don't know what I'm doing wrong here.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

Hmm, my Titan appears to use it's Ion Ds, though very rarely & not always when appropriate. I generally get wasted by Ks as they switch to GHEPTs when I get close but my Titan doesn't do the same.

Ah well, I'll have another go tomorrow.

Scoob.

[Reven]

My goodness - five pages of comments and questions already. I didn't expect this kind of response, so I actually went to bed and got some sleep today. Silly me.

Ok, I'll try and answer some of the questions that have come up:

• For those who haven't yet, READ THE README. Read the PDF version in the "ReadMe-Liesmich" directory. If you have troubles understanding anything in it, try reading the Gunnery Crews section in the XML readme. Entirely different. The PDF was written from an "in-character" perspective. The XML readme is strictly information to the player, and is "out-of-character".
• When a Military Transport lands, some of the Military Personnel it is carrying will be made available for purchase. The game has a built in random featur where stock that is in an Equipment or Trade Dock will automatically be reduced slowly to simulate other people buying it. How fast this happens is a function of the maximum amount of that item a dock can carry. Because the maximum amount of Military Personnel that a Dock can carry is 10,000, the game reduces their number VERY fast. Then, after five minutes, the plugin removes the item from the dock entirely. I suggest to land a ship ahead of the transport and have it waiting at the dock when the transport lands.
• Weapon switiching is done partially based on the distance your ship is to the target ship. This is calculated based on how far the turret camera is to the enemy ship's bridge. Someone mentioned that a Xenon K was switching to HEPTs but his ship wasn't. The bridge on a Xenon K is very far back on the ship. This might mean that its turrets are closer to your bridge than your turrets are to its bridge. Also, not all turrets will use a Gamma HEPT. Only turrets that don't have the ability to use Gamma PPCs will switch to a Gamma HEPT. The reason for this is the Gamma PPC bullets are twice as fast, longer ranged, and just barely less powerful on shields than the HEPT and equivalent on hull. It's better to keep using a Gamma PPC than to switch to an HEPT. For all capital ships, this means the fore, left and right turrets won't use HEPTs. The top, bottom, and aft turrets will.
• When it comes to determining which weapons can be used, the turrets act independently. This means that if have even a single Gamma HEPT on your ship, all the turrets that can use it will try to use it. The rule is, don't have any weapons on your ship unless you have enough that all the turrets running Gunnery Crews commands can use it.
• For those who are having a very hard time finding Military Personnel, there is a special command available only on player-owned equipment docks. Go to the command console on your equipment dock and you will be able to get a report telling you the location of every currently flying Military Transport, including its source and destination. IT costs 25,000 per report, but you can use that to direct ships ahead of the transports to be waiting for them when they dock.

If I've missed vital questions, I apologize.

[The_T]

anybody else notice that other ships are now carrying LOTS of mosquitos? I've collected about 100 in the last hour.

[Stonerkrieg]

I printed out and was reading the"in character"readme,version history when I noticed this in version 3.00 release."Added support for Kyon weapons-something wicked this way comes."
Does that mean what I think it means?!?Orshould I say,what I hope it means?That we finally get to mount kyons on "regular" ships?

[xenon_pimp]

One question: are these military transports additional ships running about the X-universe that could add a bit to the overall CPU overhead X2 requires?

[Lutzie]

Question: Do these upgrades allow ALL turrets to fire independantly? What I mean is, take a Titan which has 3 turrets on all sides. When manually being fired all the guns on one side HAVE to target the same ship. But with these upgrades can 1 turret say target one ship, and another turret on the same side target a different ship?

[The Iron Duke]

Help please!
I've downloaded the file and installed it into the Egosoft\X2 folder and it sits there very pretty.
Although I don't know what I doing with computers, the other downloads I've achieved have eventually worked.
I can't access the 'Read Me' file, when I click on the logo it just installs it again.
So what's wrong

[Hicky]

I spent until 4am chasing transports about Argon space. I've still not got enough to man one turret, but it's the best fun I've had in ages.

Logged on to the forum just after 4 and read Reven's post about buying the transporter routes for 25K. Well you live and learn

Now where did that transporter go.........

[The Great Stonk]

Help please!
I've downloaded the file and installed it into the Egosoft\X2 folder and it sits there very pretty.
Although I don't know what I doing with computers, the other downloads I've achieved have eventually worked.
I can't access the 'Read Me' file, when I click on the logo it just installs it again.
So what's wrong

look in the x2/ReadMe-Liesmich folder my friend.

[Khardur]

tis funny - my carrier (teladi condor) name is Aegis

not altogether relevant, just thought i'd share...

-k

[Reven]

By the way, I meant to put this in the readme and forgot. This plugin can be hard on your frame rate. For those people who do not mind if their game is labeled as modified, I highly the use of my fast weapon fx mod. This is based on Scoob's research into how some of the weapons-fire-against-hull effects kills your frame rate. This mod replaces the PPC hull effects with the one for the mass driver, which is very light on your CPU.

The reason I recommend this is because this gunnery plugin fires your weapons at their full refire rate. It also is almost completely immune to game lag. That is, when your frame rate drops, your firing rate doesn't. I won't bore you with the technical details that makes this possible. The upshot is, there are more shots hitting ships, which drops your frame rate, and the firing rate isn't slowing down when that happens, which slows it down more. This is most noticable when you are in a capital ship engaging another.

Thanks to Scoob for discovering the cause of the slowdown. I noticed it when I was testing this plugin originally against Khaak warships, but I didn't twig onto the cause.

@Scoob: About your weapon switching, do note that your ship won't fire Ion Disruptors when there are friendly (ships you own) or neutral (non-enemy ships of other races) within 5km of your ship. The system locks out area-effect weapons in those cases. If you want to take advantage of what I term "weapons of mass destruction", you need to get further away from non-combatants.

The next version (3.1) will have an extensive "override" system where you can override many of the internal settings. Part of this will be ability to force your turrets to use WMDs even when non-combatants are in the area. This probably isn't going to be for a few weeks, though. I want to give ticaki a break - I'm sure he's sick of going over this code.

[Tammo_Korsai]

*Drools*

This will make combat alot better!

[xenon_pimp]

What about the military transports skipping about the X-universe? Will those also be a slight performance drain?

[The_Abyss]

That shouldn't have any significant impact.

[frymaster]

no more than for every other ship.

once you've got enough military personnel, you can always turn off the generation of transports in the AL options screen.

[xenon_pimp]

That's what I was hoping to get at. A way to turn off the extra unneeded 'scenery' once I have enough crews. Little by little, my X-universe is getting crowded enough as it is.

[xenon_pimp]

Ok, another question. Since this script switches to a faster gun to do turret tracking to take advantage of the better turn rate, what's the best lighter gun to have on hand for this? I assume some mass drivers if they can be equipped, but what about for say, a Xenon K where on top and bottom turrets the smallest gun they can mount is either a GPAC or GIRE? Or the front turret where a BPAC is also possible?

Is there a table somewhere showing the turret tracking rates of the different weapons?

[IvanT]

I just wanted to add to the plethora of replies here, Gunnery Crews have added yet another quality side to high level combat in X2, haven't had this much fun since I got my first Dragon. I actually traded down from my M1 Zeus so I could take full advantage of AEGIS

Now I'm back to my M2 Oddy, things are looking pretty sweet.
Great work once again Reven.!

[Nyax]

Ok then heres another question since i can't find the answer in the PDF readme and have no idea what and where i'm supposed to be looking for for this 'Gunnery Crews section in the XML readme' (filename and location would be appreciated)

These military transports. How do you ID them? Are they a specific type of ship? Do they have a specific name?